How Fresh Are Fresh Eggs?
By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson Photo: Jean&Vic/ flickr When I was growing up in Philadelphia, we had a fresh-killed chicken delivered to us once a week from a farm in Vineland, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive away. Eggs, however, came from the A&P, a 10-minute walk from our house. When I referred in yesterday’s post to cardboard-flavored eggs, the A&P kind were what I was thinking of. I didn’t know what a fresh egg was until my husband and I came to Western Massachusetts and we started raising our own. Fresh eggs have yolks that are bright yellow, shading toward orange. When you crack one into the frying pan, the yolk sits up tall; it doesn’t lie flat like a pale yellow pancake. If you like your fried eggs over easy, you’d have to work at it to break the yolk when you turn the egg. In home-economics class in junior high school, one of the tests we girls (boys took shop while we learned to cook for them) had to take involved turning a store-bought fried egg without breaking the yolk. Mo
